-Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit: A prequel to the later Jack Ryan flicks. Not as good as the later ones. I would give this 2 out of 5 stars.

-American Hustle: Ok..I know this flick received all of the accolades, etc. And while it was an interesting watch, I don't get all of the hullabaloo! First, it was LONG. I fell asleep twice before I restarted the movie and watched the entire thing. And while it was nice looking at AR and JL wearing low cut dresses, outside of C Bale and A Ryan, I didn't see any amazing performances. JL was so-so at BEST(and that is pushing it.) B Cooper was ok, but nothing amazing. J Renner was solid(also nothing amazing.)

The story was interesting but I didn't finish watching the movie saying to myself.."Self, that as a damm good movie." Honestly, I give this 2 1/2 stars.

-White House Down: Basically Die Hard in the White House. I would watch DH(as a matter of fact, I own the DVD) again. While this was somewhat entertaining, I probably have no need to re-watch.

As for Once Upon a Time in the West, I rate that a good deal higher than Good/Bad/Ugly. One of the films I can put on and just watch for the cinematic awesomeness of it.

Interesting that Leone - working with Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento amongst others - with Once Upon a Time set out to make the definite western and (at least to me) pretty much succeeded Edited by Kaplan - 5/7/14 at 5:51pm

^ debated between that and dog day afternoon. went with later, how was falling down?

I'm probably paraphrasing a dozen other reviews, but it attempts to be an ode to those that feel mistreated by the system. It had some parts where I found myself empathizing with the characters, and does raise some good points about social issues. Worth a watch.

Btw, casting good guy Fonda as the baddie was just inspired (and took a lot of convincing).

And Leone initially wanted Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleef and Eli Wallach as the three killers waiting for Bronson in the opening sequence. Would've been quite the shocker to see them killed off in the first 15 minutes! (Eastwood opted to get his first US lead roles instead.)